Pirelli 2013

[Dragonfly]

My guess is that Pirelli will offer all other teams the same testing and some will accept to do it. Generally I think nothing but a slap on the hand will come out of it. Pirelli are not so dumb to get themselves into a situation from where there is no escape for them. This will blow over soon.

I am afraid they will have to seek FIA permission and teams' consent. They have used their limit as by the contract and can't organize anything by themselves. No matter if they wish to do so.

[bhall]

...Beyond that, how difficult can it be to correlate the data itself once the compounds are known at a later date?

Tyres are not only about compounds. There are myriads of permutations from varying construction details and compounds. If you only see black, unmarked tyres your chances at correlating it to later products are absolutely zero in my view.

If Mercedes runs a super-soft tire at a future date and finds that the super-soft tire has characteristics of X,Y, and Z, all they have to do is look back through the data collected during the secret test to find those characteristics in the data for all the unknown tires they tested. The steps between different compounds are wide enough that pinpointing one out of four shouldn't be terribly difficult.

That's not to say Mercedes is guaranteed a future advantage, because there's no guarantee that Pirelli will race the exact compounds tested in Barcelona. But even the appearance of such impropriety is enough to call the whole thing into question.

This is a situation in which all involved should have known better.

[turbof1]

The test was run after the race weekend. Marbles of the black tyres will have mixed up with the other ones. Try to find your own marbles inbetween different marbles 22 cars put down over 3 days.

[Tim.Wright]

If Mercedes runs a super-soft tire at a future date and finds that the super-soft tire has characteristics of X,Y, and Z, all they have to do is look back through the data collected during the secret test to find those characteristics in the data for all the unknown tires they tested. The steps between different compounds are wide enough that pinpointing one out of four shouldn't be terribly difficult.

Yea, thats not gonna happen...

Its hard enough to get two sets of identical tyres to behave the same way on the same car, same track same day. Trying to correlate data back several months, to a different track with what will be a different car... forget it, no chance in hell.

[WhiteBlue]

...This is a situation in which all involved should have known better.

Not really. Pirelli were kind of with their back to the wall and elected to do an attack strategy and to hell with the torpedos. If we consider the circumstances they had not much choice and reasonable people will come to the same conclusion. So they should not have much problems with the FiA tribunal when it looks into this affair. Obviously this is my personal opinion and we can disagree as some people will surely do.

[bhall]

I don't disagree that Pirelli is in an untenable situation. They've been in over their heads since they entered the sport. The question rests, as always, with the implementation of the solution. In my view, there are simply too many reasonable doubts that can be raised about how Pirelli has handled itself here.

Then again, I suppose that's par for the course for the unilateral world that is F1.

[FoxHound]

I don't disagree that Pirelli is in an untenable situation. They've been in over their heads since they entered the sport. The question rests, as always, with the implementation of the solution. In my view, there are simply too many reasonable doubts that can be raised about how Pirelli has handled itself here.

Then again, I suppose that's par for the course for the unilateral world that is F1.

Hypothetically:

Pirelli want out.
Use team struggling with tyres.

Feacal storm ensues...

Seems by design to me, with protection to Mercedes via an FIA agreement(alleged)

[Huntresa]

The test was run after the race weekend. Marbles of the black tyres will have mixed up with the other ones. Try to find your own marbles inbetween different marbles 22 cars put down over 3 days.

They clean tracks.

[Jersey Tom]

Doing a tire test with one team is highly irregular if you ask me, especially in a single supplier series! It's not even in Pirelli's best interests for their own development if you only have 1 car and 1-2 drivers giving you feedback on your proposed 2014 line-up.

Tires forcing engineers to tell drivers to back off and drive to a set pace... throwing treads from delams... lying or at least misleading people as to the cause... wind tunnel tires not indicative of the real thing... my my.

When asked by AUTOSPORT if Mercedes could have gained an advantage in helping it understand its tyre problems, Hembery said: "Absolutely not, no."

Can't say I agree with that line either...

...this whole circus just gets more ridiculous every week.

[CHT]

...Beyond that, how difficult can it be to correlate the data itself once the compounds are known at a later date?

Tyres are not only about compounds. There are myriads of permutations from varying construction details and compounds. If you only see black, unmarked tyres your chances at correlating it to later products are absolutely zero in my view.

Having just completed the race at Barcelona with the same car, I think it should be pretty straight forward for the team to guess which tyres they are running even if they are unmarked.

[Matt Somers]

Mine is currently an internal dilemma with the Sporting Regulations and how they are worded, I always thought (rightly or wrongly) that teams were not allowed to test with their current car or cars from the 2 seasons preceding that. Reading the regulations:

Track testing shall be considered any track running time not part of an Event undertaken by a competitor entered in the Championship, using cars which conform substantially with the current Formula One Technical Regulations in addition to those from the previous or subsequent year.

In the context of how that last paragraph is written 'Subsequent' to me would read as a 2011 car (current tech regulations, previous or subsequent), this leads to Ferrari being implicated in the debacle too having conducted a similar test with the F150 after Bahrain....

[turbof1]

The test was run after the race weekend. Marbles of the black tyres will have mixed up with the other ones. Try to find your own marbles inbetween different marbles 22 cars put down over 3 days.

They clean tracks.

Not if they know that there will be a test right after the race weekend. In that case they'll clean the track after the test is completed.

[Mika1]

Doing a tire test with one team is highly irregular if you ask me, especially in a single supplier series! It's not even in Pirelli's best interests for their own development if you only have 1 car and 1-2 drivers giving you feedback on your proposed 2014 line-up.

Tires forcing engineers to tell drivers to back off and drive to a set pace... throwing treads from delams... lying or at least misleading people as to the cause... wind tunnel tires not indicative of the real thing... my my.

When asked by AUTOSPORT if Mercedes could have gained an advantage in helping it understand its tyre problems, Hembery said: "Absolutely not, no."

Can't say I agree with that line either...

...this whole circus just gets more ridiculous every week.

Irregular? Ferrari tested with the F10 after the Bahrain GP, I have seen pics on twitter. I have to agree with WhiteBlue here. Pirelli is frustrated the teams didn't want to give them an up-to-date car to test the tyres. They wanted a 2013 car and Mercedes brought their car.

[SectorOne]

Having just completed the race at Barcelona with the same car, I think it should be pretty straight forward for the team to guess which tyres they are running even if they are unmarked.

And how would they guess that? All of the tires were tires they had never run before.
It´s post-Canada and 2014 tires they ran, not current tires.

[GTSpeedster]

Toto Wolf said on Sky Germany that all tested tyres were black and unmarked. So the team and its drivers had no idea what they were testing. They were told it is all for 2014. If that is true I don't see that Merc did anything wrong under sporting regulations. It would be a Pirelli test if they are the only party to get data from it. Also confimed on Autosport.
http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/107676

Why should anyone believe that when they conducted a test in secret and without any watcher from any of the other teams? The issue here is about trust. Why have they decided to conduct the test without any form of scrutiny either from the FIA or the other Teams? If only to show good faith I'm sure Mercedes/Pirelli would WANT to inform and invite the other teams to be present, wouldn't they? Particularly if they didn't plan on gaining or hiding something...